No preferential treatment for Keene

The online magazine Slate published an article (which actually originally appeared in the Financial Times) on Donald Keene and why he became Japanese last week.

Most of the article reads more like a French restaurant review than an interview (I do want to try that restaurant though. It sounds delicious!), but one small excerpt caught my attention:

Immigration officials required documentation proving his parents were married, something he is still struggling to locate. Then they needed proof that he was American. A US passport did not suffice. Finally, they requested evidence that Keene, the most famous foreign scholar in Japan, had graduated. “I said, ‘Well, I have various honorary doctorates, including from very important Japanese universities.’ ‘Oh, that doesn’t count,’ they said, ‘because honorary doctorates are given to people even without education.’” Keene confesses to being irritated.
I have to wonder how accurate this is, as graduating is preferred, but not technically a requirement, for naturalizing. If you say you have graduated from so and so school, they will obviously ask you to provide documentation for it.

My guess is that Dr. Keene could easily skip providing documentation for his universities and present all of the other honors and official national rewards he's received (both from the United States and Japan).

I found the story of him translating works that nobody else wanted to translate because they were physically stained with blood to be both morbid and fascinating.

As for the passport not being proof of citizenship, I too had a hard time understanding this, until it was explained to me that a passport can have up to a ten year expiration date, and the Ministry of Justice likes to see paperwork that is anywhere from three to six months "fresh." So I guess they ask you to get a U.S. Consulate Officer to provide you with a certificate stating your nationality is because in theory it's possible you may have lost the nationality you have that's stated on your passport over the years. Of course, that doesn't explain why you'd still be in possession of a non-voided passport.

Anyway, it's an interesting read. If anything, it at least made me want to try that elaborate lunch from ヴァンサン {vansan} (Vincent) someday.

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